Green Leaf Manuring Advantages; Making; Cultivation

Green Leaf Manuring Advantages and Green Manure Crops Cultivation

Today, we discuss the topic of Green Green Leaf Manuring Advantages and Cultivation practices.

Green Manuring Guide:

Healthy soils lead to healthy and productive plants. But, soil fertility maintenance is becoming a huge task for most of the farmers. Excessive use of chemical pesticides like insecticides, fungicides and chemical fertilizers known as inorganic fertilizers has been increasing day by day which is leading to soil pollution, water erosion, water pollution and other adverse effects on soil fertility. There are fewer ways to overcome such type of severe problems of soil. However, green manuring crop farming may solve such type of problems in agriculture and also rehabilitate the fertility of the soil. Green manuring with other organic practices may be much more beneficial.

Cultivation of Green Manure Crops.
Cultivation of Green Manure Crops.

Read: Advantages and Disadvantages of GM Crops.

Green Manure crops cultivation:

Green Manuring is a practice of cultivation of green manure crops and harvesting the undecomposed green plant materials or tissues in the soil in order to improve the soil fertility as well as the physical condition of the soil. Green manure crop cultivation is one of the methods of sustainable agrifarming methods. It is also a component of GAP (Good Agriculture Practice). Green Manure Crops are nature’s gift to improve soil fertility. There are many advantages of green manure crop cultivation. In this article, we will let you know the green manure crops in India, How to make green manure, green manuring advantages and disadvantages, characteristics of green manure, what is green leaf manure, green manure crops and which crop is used as green manuring.

Green Manure Crops:

Green manure crop cultivation is done by using both leguminous as well as nonleguminous crops. Both the crops are used as green manures for ages. Some of the important green manure crops are listed below.

Leguminous green manure crops

Leguminous green manure crops are the crops that produce nodules on their roots which helps in increasing the fertility of the soil.

  • Sunhemp
  • Dhaincha
  • Blackram
  • Mung
  • Cowpea
  • Khesri
  • Breseem
  • Azolla
  • Rice bean
  • Pea
  • Lentil
  • Soybean
  • Lentil
Nonleguminous Green manure crops
  • Jowar
  • Maize
  • Bhang
  • Mustard
  • Sunflower
  • Carrot
  • Coriander
  • Niger
  • Radish
  • Wheat

Dhaincha and Sunhempare the green manure crops contain the highest amount of nitrogen.

How to make Green Leaf Manuring

Crimson Green Manure Crop.
Crimson Green Manure Crop.

Green Manuring is done in two methods. There are two types of green manuring crops viz., in situ green manuring cultivation and introduced green leaf manuring.

  1. In situ green manuring: It is the method of growing specific and suitable green manuring crops in an area or field and harvesting the green manure crop at a certain stage. An example is Paddy cultivation gives good production and productivity after in situ green manurings with Dhaincha green manure crop. Steps in In situ green manuring are described below.

Step i: Land preparation: Land preparation depends on the green manure crop to be cultivated and presiding main crop cultivation.

Step ii: Seed sowing o green manure crop: green manure crop selected is to be sown mostly in the month of May to June immediately after the first monsoon rain. For Example, Sunhemp and Dhaincha are the green manure crops to be cultivated before paddy cultivation

Step iii: Sowing method in green manure crops: Most of the green manure crops are sown by the broadcasting method of seed sowing.

Step iv: Seed rate of green manure crops: Seed rate in green manuring varies from crop to crop selected for green manuring. Some of the Green manure crops seed rates are given below

  • Dhaincha 40 – 45 kg/ ha
  • Sunhemp 40 – 50kg/ ha
  • Lucerne 15 – 20 kg/ ha
  • Berseem 20 – 25 kg/ ha
  • Moong 25 – 30 kg/ ha

Step v: Green Manure crop burying: The best time to bury the green manure crop is at the flowering stage. Most of the green manure crops attain flowering stage after 6 – 8 weeks from the date of sowing. However, the flowering stage varies among various green manure crops. The succulence of the green manure is to be checked before burying of the green manure crop. The green manure crops are further allowed to decompose for about 3- 4 weeks and the pressing main crop is to be cultivated.

  1. Ex situ green manuring:

It is nothing but introduced green leaf manuring. It includes the collection of stubbles, leaves and green twigs of shrubs, herbs, forest trees, and any other newest trees or plants and incorporating them into the cultivating land or field. This includes the only collection of those twigs of certain or specific crops such as Wild dhaincha, Gliricidia, Wild cassi, wild indigo, Subabul, Karanja, neem, etc. In addition, you can also go for collecting the leaves and twigs of some beneficial green manure weeds like Eupatorium species and Ambrosia, etc.

Read: Types of Biosensors Used in Agriculture.

Characteristics of Green Manure Crops:

Mustard Green Manure Crop.
Mustard Green Manure Crop.

As the Green manure crops are beneficial for organic or natural farming, there are many benefits of Green Manure Farming. We have given some of the major pros of green manure crop cultivation.

  • They are highly capable of growing in the majority of soils.
  • Green manure crops are also capable of growing quickly.
  • They are tolerant of various pest and diseases, hence require less economical inputs for cultivation.
  • In addition, the green manure crops are also tolerant to adverse abiotic climatic conditions like drought, water logging conditions, and high and low temperatures.
  • As most of the green manure crops are nitrogen-fixing through nitrogen-fixing bacteria like Rhizobium, they increase the Nitrogen content os the soil.
  • They are capable of growing fast and also capable of accumulating important nutrients within the soil.
  • Gren
  • It is easy to incorporate green manure crops into the soil.
  • It serves as food for earthworms which are the ecological engineers of the soil.
  • Increase the rhizospherenadrhizoplane biodiversity conditions by increasing the number of beneficial microbes in the soil.
  • It is also easy for quick disposal of green manure crops.
  • Helps in saline soils reclamation which is major problems in most of the soils.
  • Green manure crops are affordable and cheap to most of the farmers.

Nutrient (N) Potential of Green Manure Crops:

Various Green Manure Crops has various potentiality in increasing the nutrient content in the soil especially N content which is highly required for most of the Agriculture Crops. The potentiality of various Green Manure Crops in increasing Nitrogen content of the soil is given below

  • Sunhemp – 84 kg/ha
  • Dhaincha- 77 kg/ha
  • Green gram or Black gram – 38 kg/ha
  • Cowpea – 57 kg/ha
  • Khesari – 61 kg/ha
  • Pea – 80 kg/ha

Disadvantages of Green Leaf Manure Crops

There are fewer weaknesses of green manure farming than the pros of green manure farming which are given below

  • Requires huge quantities of green manure.
  • Green manure farming is labor intensive.
  • The farmer must wait for more time i.e., 3 to 4 months from the date of sowing.
  • Poor availability of green manure seeds.
  • Lack of research in green manure farming.

Conclusion of Green Manuring:

This is the brief information on Green Manure crop cultivation. If you have any doubts or queries regarding Green Manure Guide, comment below.

That’s all folks about Green Leaf Manuring Advantages and its cultivation methods.

Read: How to Grow Hydroponic Vegetables for Profit.

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